This article is partially RV related. But not the first part. My “work truck” is a 2004 Ford Explorer Sport Trac. It’s a great little truck. I bought it used, with a third party Alarm and Remote Start unit installed. I would be working out in the garage or yard and would hear the locks on the truck “locking”. Anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds apart, all the door locks would click like I was hitting the lock button on the remote. I presumed it was the alarm/remote and started diagnosing around the box. The first anomaly I found was the supply voltage was fluctuating. Odd. I checked the fuses – they were fine. Still had fluctuating voltage. I went to the battery and put my probes on the battery cable clamps – and fluctuating voltage. What? Batteries don’t do that. I put my probes on the battery posts (this battery has the round cylinder posts). No fluctuation except a tiny amount when the locks cycled.
The clamps were tight, clean and no apparent corrosion. So, I took them off and looked inside and I did see a bit of discoloration. Not enough to notice if I wasn’t looking for it. I cleaned it off, put it all back together and no cycling locks. For about three months. Rinse, Repeat – I cleaned them again. Same result. Three months later they were cycling again. This time I cut off the cable clamps and installed new ones. It has been a couple of years now, on the same battery and the problem never returned. The odd thing is I never had a problem starting the engine even with this situation. So there must have been something mixed in with the lead in the clamps that was creating an odd resistive layer that was only resistive at low current but allowed full flow under starting load.
Now, to part two. My son-in-law called with a dead van while they were camping “somewhere out west”. They assured me that nothing had been left on. He took out his meter and we started checking voltage at the battery. He reported that the meter reading was jumping all over the place. Since he has side-flat-post connectors he had to remove the cables to get a direct on the battery reading. The battery was run down but the voltage reading was rock steady. I had him clean the connectors good and after a recharge everything was fine. Since the battery was 5 years old and had been run down, they were also going to replace it a few days later. My thinking is this weird corrosive layer caused a voltage drop to the car. Items in the van (newer van with lots of computers) that are “asleep” drawing very little power wake up as the voltage fluctuates back up. While the van was parked for a couple of days, this cycle was enough to run down an old battery.
So, the takeaway here is it does matter whether you put your meter leads on the cable clamp or the post!
p.s. while I’m here I just have to tell another story about my 2004 Ford Explorer Sport Trac. My previous car was a Saturn Vue. I had rented a trailer from U-Haul using my Vue via their website. Well, I went to the U-Haul website to rent a trailer for my Sport Trac but since I was in a hurry, I didn’t bother to change my vehicle type. I knew my truck was more capable than my Vue, why bother? We got to U-Haul and the service guy came out, took one look and said “I can’t rent you a trailer”. WHY? “Because this is an Explorer”. Wait – its a truck, not an Explorer! “Doesn’t matter, can’t rent you a trailer.”
We left and found a truck at another company (no one else had trailers). But I started researching and sure enough, the U-Haul website confirmed that they won’t rent to anyone with a vehicle with the name Explorer on the vehicle. They insist it is not a safety issue (they will rent to a Mercury-badged version of the same truck). Apparently, they had a spate of liability lawsuits involving “Explorer” named vehicles and the company lawyers won out over reason. As so often they do…….
Another trip, some more gotchas. I’ve pulled the issues from my regular trip blog so they are more accessible.
Refrigerator without baffles
This was a three week, “out west” trip. Where doesn’t really matter except its hot? Another blog will talk about this trip, with pictures. This blog is about the various technical problems encountered on this trip. Altitude is 6000 ft plus. The sun is burning down the side of our RV where the refrigerator sits. And it’s getting warm inside the fridge. Up till now, we hadn’t had any issue with its cooling but the temp is creeping up north of 40. So, I do what I always do, I start poking around to see what isn’t right.
First, I rearrange some of the food to make sure there is sufficient air flow. Our little inside fan is working – but I replaced the batteries anyway because they have been spinning for over a month. The temperature creeps up another degree or two as the afternoon wears on.
Outside – I pull the access door off and start looking around. I was familiar with this compartment as I had installed a UV water purifier for the ice maker back in a corner out of the way. I should have looked around a bit more while I was working in there.
Looking up right side along burner stack.Looking up near the burner stack at upper coil – no baffles. I’m not sure I see the vent.After I installed Reflectix baffle between bottom coil and outside wall.After installed reflectix in 9×9 corner space that ran the full height of the refrigerator.
The space behind the refrigerator was a good 8 inches deep from the back of the fridge box to the inside of the outside wall. In the left corner, there was a 9×9 inch open vertical column. So what, you ask? Well, I go grab the manual for your refrigerator and it has an installation section – that tells me that baffles must be installed so that any air drafting up past the back of the refrigerator coils is directed THROUGH the coils, not merely in the general vicinity. Well, my RV was built by Forest River – so there were zero baffles near the lower coils and nothing blocking the 81 square inches of empty space in the left corner. I couldn’t see clearly if there was a baffle near the upper coils as required in the installation manual. That will wait until I pull the roof vent off and inspect the top. But I did look at the vent itself and it looks like it is installed way too close to the roof, thus further limiting air flow. There are no fans moving air – the refrigerator relies on a natural draft. If most of that draft can go through the space without getting near the coils – things don’t work right.
Since we were on the road – I came up with a quick fix. I grabbed some Reflectix and fashioned a block for the open space and a baffle to direct air through the lower coils and locked them in place with aluminum tape. Over the next few days, the refrigerator ran 4 to 5 degrees cooler. Upon returning home I inspected it all and the reflectix was still firmly in place. My plan is at some point to install more permanent baffles but I need to pull the roof vent off first and inspect up there.
This is yet another case of an RV manufacturer violating installation rules laid out by the appliance manufacturer.
Power Center
On another occasion, I pulled out the manual for my power center. One of the first instructions on the installation page was DO NOT MOUNT VERTICALLY. They wanted the unit mounted horizontally – I presume for cooling purposes. How is mine mounted? Vertically. Does it matter? I don’t know. I do know that at random times we are on outside AC power, the cooling fan on the “converter” (aka battery charger) comes on screaming full speed for about a minute. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Makes me wonder. I’m planning to upgrade my RV to solar with a new Inverter/Charger, so maybe it won’t matter. But, how long before it would fail due to inadequate cooling if I kept on using it?
Microwave
We have a Convection/Microwave oven mounted above the standard stove hood/fan. It sits in a wooden box with a metal face plate filling in the front gap between the sides of the microwave and the box. The plate has “cooling/venting” slots. Whenever we cook anything (convection or not), the microwave ends up with a huge amount of condensation inside it. This can’t be good for it. I’m sure it violates the manufacturing installation requirements. They essentially put the microwave into a closed box so any venting the microwave does out its side or back is simply cycled right back into its intake vent. I’m sure it wasn’t designed to operate in a condensing atmosphere. Fortunately, since it is a convection oven, whenever it stops heating – the fans continue to run and we leave the door open to help it dry out. This is on my list to be corrected before the next trip out. I’ll pull the metal trim, and the microwave and look at the intended air flow pattern. Then make sure the airflow around the microwave receives fresh air and the exhaust leaves the microwave cabinet. I expect some holes and perhaps a fan will be required. While I’m at it I’m going to find some way to open/close the stove vent from the INSIDE. Going outside, in the rain, after the RV has been jacked up is no fun. Neither is realizing that at 60mph on the highway that constant flapping noise is the vent you forgot to close. How far is the next rest stop?
Gas tank Fill tube
On one leg of our trip, we did a fair amount of uphill on the highway, pulling the truck behind. We pulled into a gas station and I attempted to fill the tank. Every time I squeezed the trigger on the nozzle – it shut right off. I was thinking at first, I had picked a bad pump. I pulled the nozzle further and further out thinking splashing gas might be shutting it off. Then I noticed that when I was trying to put gas in – gas fumes and droplets were flying back out of the fill all around the nozzle. Seems like perfect conditions for a static discharge to start a fire…. Then I realized: the fill tube was so hot that gas was boiling on its way to the tank. In nearly 9000 miles up to this point it hadn’t happened till now. I can only presume it was a combination of the high altitude, hot sun and pushing the Triton engine up the hills plus the right wind direction. Oh and the fact that the fill tube crosses a channel next to the frame leaves it exposed to hot air passing under the RV. I kept putting gas in, in short spurts and eventually the fill tube cooled enough I was able to fill the tank. When we later passed a hardware store I picked up some foam pipe insulation and fashioned an insulator for the fill tube with gaffer’s tape and tie wraps. Hopefully, problem solved.
Campground electrical
I have an EMS for my campground hookups. I plug in my extension cord to the RV – then to the pedestal – with the breaker off. Then flip on the breaker and go look at the EMS display. It will show the frequency and voltage for about 30 seconds while checking the quality of the power – then connect the RV if all is well. Prior to connecting – the EMS showed 119 volts. A bit low. When it connected, (and the battery charger was on), it dropped to 114. When the A/C kicked in – it dropped below 100 and the EMS kicked out. This wasn’t unexpected as when I plugged the cable into the pedestal I notice one of the connections had been hot enough to toast the edges of the insulator. We called the campground owner to check and he moved us to another spot.
Overall – things have gone pretty well mechanically on this trip. The refrigerator will cost a couple more hours to make sure everything is set up right. I fixed the gas fill tube on the road. The microwave will be another couple of hours at least to fix before we head out again. I’ll update this blog when I get it modified. If I get it modified……
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